Tories Say No Public Money for Regional News

By Lilly Vitorovich

The opposition U.K. Conservative party doesn’t support plans by the ruling Labour Party to subsidize regional broadcast news, opposition Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt told a media gathering Thursday. “The Digital Economy Bill sets in stone the government policy of using public subsidy to prop up regional news on ITV,” Hunt said.

“Using the license fee to prop up regional news simply casts a failed regional TV model in aspic,” Hunt told the Oxford Media Convention. ‘It would actively prevent the emergence of new, local media models, making broadcasters focus their energies on satisfying politicians not reaching viewers.

Last November, Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw set out plans to use up to £100 million in license fee cash that was previously earmarked to assist with a digital switchover to support local news in areas covered by ITV PLC’s ITV1 flagship channel across most U.K. regions. The license fee is paid by U.K. television-owning households to fund the BBC.

ITV is the U.K.’s largest terrestrial commercial broadcaster by sales. Other regional public service broadcast licenses are held by STV in much of Scotland and UTV in Northern Ireland.

The government’s bill gives communications regulator Ofcom powers to appoint and fund independent news consortia to deliver local broadcast news, looking to avoid concern over how regional news will be funded when ITV’s public service broadcasting commitments lapse after the digital switchover.

“So let me be clear. We do not support these provisions in the Digital Economy Bill. And we do not support the pilot schemes,” Hunt said. “The contracts are not due to be signed until May. Anyone looking to sign one should understand that we’ll do all we can to legally unpick them if (opposition leader) David Cameron enters Number 10. And if they haven’t been signed, we won’t be doing so,” he said, arguing that the current plans won’t produce “improved and forward-looking local media sector.”

The Conservative Party has called for the BBC license fee to be frozen amid widespread calls for its activities to be restricted, and has attacked Ofcom for carrying out what Hunt last year described as “a conveyor-belt of reviews and consultations.”
– Adrian Kerr contributed to this report.

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